To the Depths

Picture a diver, stripping off garment after garment, making himself naked, then flashing for a moment in the air, and then down through the green, and warm, and sunlit water into the pitch black, cold, freezing water, down into the mud and slime, then up again, his lungs almost bursting, back again to the green and warm and sunlit water, and then at last out into the sunshine, holding in his hand the dripping thing he went down to get.

C.S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle

When I was about fifteen, I went through a phase of serious aversion to the line in the Apostle’s Creed “He descended into Hell”.

I was pretty sure it must have been a typo. 

I’d systematically yawn or cough every time we reached “…and was buried…” just to avoid having to proclaim the words that followed. I couldn’t bring myself to say what my heart staunchly refused to believe.

I was accustomed to a glorious, majestic God of the ‘countless choirs of angels sing Your praise’ variety. My God was goodness and purity, untainted by any stain. He was not a God that went to Hell.

Taking a brief glance across all major world religions, this glorious, majestic God (or gods) seems to be the idea we’re most comfortable with. That kind of god stands in contrast to our filth and squalor; it shines out as the beacon of goodness, the promised Nirvana when at last we’ve rid ourselves of sensuality and sin.

Sitting in Mass this morning as the second reading was proclaimed, I couldn’t help but be repeatedly struck by a singular, insistent thought: that’s not our God.

[Jesus] emptied himself,

     taking the form of a slave,  
     coming in human likeness     
     and found human in appearance,  
He humbled himself,         
     becoming obedient to death,         
     even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:7-8

When people – touched by the fact that elements of Truth can be found in every religion – ask me why they should embrace Christianity specifically, this is the reading that immediately comes to mind.

It’s the great scandal of our faith. And for me it’s the most important point of difference with other religions.

We proclaim a God who emptied Himself of the glory that was rightly His, to dive to the depths – even of hell – in order to raise up all that was lost.

We proclaim a God who got His feet dirty - a God who took on Himself our most disgusting sins (I’m talking raping-children-and-instigating-genocide kind of sins here) and let us walk away free.

The analogy of a diver at the start of this blog post resonates deeply for me. God stripped off layer after layer of His own dignity until He was naked and lying in the arms of a “lowly servant” – female, Jewish, and a child herself. And it just kept getting darker and colder. He descended further yet to be naked and lying as corpse on the ground – already descending from organic matter to inorganic. 

“Rotting flesh” is not usually the language we use to describe God. But it’s the state of being He freely chose for Himself.

In my limited understanding of other faith systems, this kind of God is pretty unique to Christianity. St Paul reminded us that the crucified, humiliated God whom we preach is “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

The pursuit of virtuous living is a pretty central element in every faith system. Humility is often included as a requisite virtue for getting into God’s good books – presumably because our self-effacement serves as a better contrast for His glory.

But Christianity’s focal point is the humility of God himself.

Our pursuit of humility isn’t just “I must decrease so that He can increase”. Look – He’s God. If you don’t praise Him the rocks are gonna.

No, humility in the Christian tradition points back to creation itself: “God created mankind in His image; in the image of God He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) We choose humility because He by His very nature is humble, and we are made in His image.

Love makes itself smaller. Love chose to be dependent on another. Love will go to the depths of Hell to make sure that the other is going to be okay.

That is the Love we believe to be our God. Is that the kind of Love we live?

“In humility, regard others as more important than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:4)

In our Hosannas and Hallelujahs and Easter joy, in our extravagant liturgies and ornate churches and pomp-and-circumstance parades – we worship the God of resurrected glory. I’m so glad we do, because He has been lifted up and exalted highly. Our knees should bend and our tongues proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

But I also think we should remember that the Incarnation came first. His muddy feet came first. Rotting flesh was the manifestation of Love before the empty tomb was. The Lord to whom we bend our knees descended into Hell to raise all things to resurrected glory.

And we’re made in that image.

AMDG